Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust

Front matter

Bulgaria, the Jews, and the

Holocaust

On the Origins of a Heroic Narrative

Contents

List of Illustrations x Preface xiii Introduction 1

On the “Rescue of the Jews" and National Exceptionalism:

A Riddle of Received Wisdom 5 Knowledge about the Holocaust: Justice, Fiction, and Controversies 9 Contours of an Investigation 11 Nationalizing the Past, Internationally 14 Reassessing the Cold War Era 19 The Way Forward 22 l. The Judicial Production of an Account of Anti-Jewish

Conclusion

Historiographical Disputes

What We Talk about When We Talk about the Holocaust

Jewish Voices in the Writing of the Past

Challenges of the Page: Leafing through Time, Speaking the Seen

Appendix: The March 1943 Deportations from Territories Occupied by Bulgaria

Bibliography Index ce ix

299 306 313

314 321 322 323

329 333 369

2.1 2.2

2.3 2.4

3.1

3.2

3.3

Illustrations

Maps Territories under Bulgarian civil or military occupation during World War II

Multiple locations of the Jewish deportees’ journey filmed in March 1943

Figures

Seventh Chamber of the People's Court: The court Seventh Chamber of the People's Court: The testimony of the minister of propaganda, Dimo Kazasov

German poster (working copy) of the film Sterne/Zvezdi

A shot of Anzel Rajmond Vagenstajn arrested by the Bulgarian police (1943)

Ruth (Sasa Krusarska) in a deportation convoy (Zvezdi/Sterne)

The meeting between Ruth and Walter, the German second lieutenant, across the barbed wire fence of an internment camp (Sterne/Zvezdi)

Attorney General Fritz Bauer on the television broadcast *Heuter Abend Kellerklub,” Sendereihe des Hessisches Rundfunks, December 8, 1964

Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, plenipotentiary minister of the Reich in Sofia (June 17, 1941-September 1944)

First plate of the photo album created, at the prosecution's request, from the 1943 rushes for the Beckerle trial in Frankfurt, 1967-68

51 86

100 129

ILLUSTRATIONS & xi

3.4 Seventh plate of the album created from the 1943 rushes for the Beckerle trial in Frankfurt, 1967-68 175

3.5 Front page of the exhibition catalog Rettung der bulgarischen Juden—1943: Eine Dokumentation, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin, 1984 194

5.1 Sketch of the monument to the “victims of fascist terror” inaugurated in Bitola, Socialist Republic of Macedonia, March 11, 1958 275

Text Inserts

Box “Izselvane na evrei.” Archive inventory, Bulgarian National Film Archive (first reference) 142

Box 2 “Izselvane na evrei, 1940.” Archive inventory, Bulgarian National Film Archive (second reference) 142

Box 3 “Deportation of Jews from Thrace.” Inventory of the USHMM film collections 143

Box 4 “Die Deportation des Juden aus dem Weifsimeergebiet." Notice from the film department of the German Federal Archives 146

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Preface

On March 15, 2023, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, general counsel and associate executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), made a statement on Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). After recalling the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews” during World War II, he added:

We cannot, we simply cannot ignore the fact, and we know the number— it is 11,343 Jews from Greece, from Macedonia who were arrested and who were handed over to the Germans by Bulgarian police, by Bulgarian troops. So, those are the realities, and the only way we will come to term with history is by facing up to it. Now no one is suggesting that anyone alive today bears any responsibility for this. The past is the past. But there is a responsibility to historical truth. By the Bulgarian government, to own up to the truth and to put that as part of its obligation to ensure that the historical record is recorded accurately. No one is doing anyone any favors by distorting history or by suggesting that, oh!, those 11,343 Jews, they are not that important.!

A few weeks later, in a much noted article, Rosensaft further elaborated on his previous statement: “To be valid, history must be predicated on absolute, uncompromising truth, not manipulation. Eighty years ago, 48,000 Jews were not deported from Bulgaria—while 11,343 other Jews were cruelly loaded on trains bound for Treblinka, where they were murdered. These are two interdependent realities that cannot be and must not be allowed to be uncoupled.”?

Rarely had such a prominent representative of the WJC, a highly influential organization in the field of Holocaust remembrance, made so explicit a statement regarding Bulgaria’s wartime role and politics of history. Indeed, for decades, across the world, Bulgaria, a former Balkan ally of the Axis powers during the war, was mostly known for its role in what was usually called the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews"—that is, the nondeportation of about 48,000 Jews holding Bulgarian citizenship, including the remarkable circumstances and actions by Jews as well as non-Jews that had permitted their

1 Interview by journalist Irina Nedeva, program Horizont, BNR, March 15, 2023, https://bnr.bg/horizont/post/101793639.

2 Menachem Z. Rosensaft, “The Other Side of Bulgaria’s Holocaust History Is Needed,” EUObserver.com.

xiv 6869 PREFACE survival. Most observers were also cognizant of the fact that in the territories of the Kingdoms of Yugoslavia (most of Vardar Macedonia and the city of Pirot in Serbia) and Greece (Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia) held by Bulgaria between late April 1941 and October 1944, 11,343 Jews had been arrested by the Bulgarian authorities, police and army; interned in temporary detention camps; and deported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated.

In discussing these historical events, however, since the end of World War II, Bulgarian public discourse had systematically lent greater salience to the rescue than the deportations, though the latter issue was never entirely silenced. But in 2023, statements by several Bulgarian officials indicated that the writing about the Holocaust in Bulgaria might be undergoing a dramatic revision, raising concerns over a possible distortion of historical facts. At first sight, this evolution was counterintuitive. The eightieth anniversary of the events of March 1943—when the deportation of an estimated 8,000 Bulgarian Jews was called off, while the Jews of Yugoslavia and Greece under Bulgarian occupation faced deportation—offered the Bulgarian state a unique opportunity to recognize its coresponsibility in anti-Jewish persecutions during World War II. Some observers went so far as to hope that Bulgaria's leaders might follow in the footsteps of former French president Jacques Chirac, who, in July 1995, had publicly acknowledged France's responsibility in the deportations of tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi extermination camps. These hopes were brutally crushed. Instead, Bulgaria's rulers propelled further evolutions in the Bulgarian historical narrative.

First, although in 2003 the Bulgarian government had adopted the designation *Day of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, of the Victims of the Holocaust and the Crimes against Humanity" in speaking of March 10, the ceremonies in March 2023 were consecrated nearly exclusively to the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews.” Second, the list of “rescuers” was extended to the entirety of Bulgarian society and, even more surprisingly, to the Bulgarian state—army and police included—that is, those very institutions that played a crucial role in the successful arrest and deportation of the Jews living in the occupied territories and in the failed deportation of a segment of Bulgarian Jewry. Third, in an astonishing move, the former king, Boris III, who had authorized the deportations from Bulgarian-held territories, was praised for his role in the salvation, while the Bulgarian chief of state, Rumen Radev,? a politician close to the Bulgarian left, paid special tribute to King Boris and Queen Giovanna (Joanna). Finally, the blame for the deportations was

3 Anoteon the transliteration of names and patronyms: I have opted for transliteration except for certain individuals who prefer that their names be spelled differently in Romance languages. Those choices, when known, have been respected.

PREFACE §&® xv attributed to the Third Reich alone. Television and radio shows, movies and documentaries, exhibitions, conferences, and publications: all contributed to the shaping of this new discourse.

That the Bulgarian authorities were intent on crafting a novel heroic narrative had become evident as early as January 2023 from a statement released on the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture:

At today’s meeting, which was held at the Ministry of Culture, the members of the Initiative Committee for the commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews during the Second World War adopted a decision. . . . Today's meeting was led by the minister of foreign affairs, Nikolaj Milkov, in his capacity as deputy chairman of the National Initiative Committee, which is overseen by the president of the Republic of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev. *I am convinced that we will all work together for the cause of showing the significant role of the Bulgarian state, its institutions [emphasis added], the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and the Bulgarian people for this unprecedented act in Europe in one of the darkest years on our continent, when the Bulgarian people and state demonstrated tolerance, empathy, but also will and courage to save their Jewish fellow citizens.*

In a similar perspective, on March 9, 2023, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski hosted a large conference on “the role of the jurists in the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews,” co-organized by the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture, the Association of Prosecutors in Bulgaria, the Association of Investigators in Bulgaria, the Federation of the Zionists in Bulgaria, and the Israeli Embassy? A monument featuring a broken Star of David was designed for the occasion. The event's organizers stressed the opposition of the jurists’ professional guild to the initial onset of anti-Jewish legislation (in a November 4, 1940, letter) and pointed to the legal background of several prominent public figures who opposed the deportation of Bulgarian Jews in March 1943 (chief among them, Dimitar Pesev, deputy speaker of the National Assembly) as well as the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories (in particular, parliamentarians Nikola Musanov

4 "Iniciativnijat komitet za otbeljazvaneto na 80-ata godisnina ot spasjavanto na bálgarskite evrei odobri nacionalna programa na éestvanijata, kojato šte predloži da se prieme ot ministerskija savet,” January 17, 2023, https:// mc.government.bg/newsn.php?n=8589 &i=1.

5. See the program of the conference at https://www.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/ novini/kalendar/mezhdunarodna konferenciya rolyata na yuristite za spasyavaneto na b lgarskite evrei; for an official account of the conference, see https:/ /www.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/novini/novini i s bitiya/ mezhdunarodna konferenciya rolyata na yuristite za spasyavaneto na b. lgarskite evrei.

xvi é PREFACE and Petko Stojnov). One might have added that those who most doggedly sought the destruction of the Jews also were jurists, including Aleksandăr Belev, a staunch anti-Semite and the head of the specialized Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, in charge of devising and coordinating anti-Jewish policies after September 1942, and Minister of the Interior Petăr Gabrovski, a lawyer and cofounder of the radical nationalist and anti-Semitic organization Fighters for the Advancement of Bulgarianness (Sajuzat na ratnicite za napredika na bilgarstinata, also known as Ratnik).Ó

This new course adopted by the executive power created a deep sense of uneasiness among the Bulgarian Jewish community. On March 4-5, 2023, in Kavala, for the first time in eighty years, the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria Salom, led by Professor Aleksandar Oskar, together with representatives from Bulgarian civil society, took part in the commemoration of the deportation of the Jews of Kavala when it was a Greek city under Bulgarian occupation.” As far as the responsibility of the Bulgarian state in these events was concerned, Oskar’s statement was shorn of any ambivalence:

The Jewish community of this ancient and beautiful city, the pearl of the White Sea, was rounded up before dawn. Unfortunately for us, by police officers wearing uniforms of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. This is a fact. A total of 1,484 people from Kavala died in Treblinka. The same thing happened in Xánthi, Drama, and Komotini. Just like in Skopje, Bitola, Pirot. 11,343 Jewish destinies were shattered across the kingdom’s “new lands.” It is time to look “in the eyes” at a painful page in our recent history, especially since it precedes and has traced the trajectory of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews.’

In an interview to the cultural weekly Kultura, Professor Oskar further stated: “It is a good thing that in recent years contemporary authors have conducted an in-depth analysis of these events. I would like to draw attention to the book by the French scholar Professor Nadége Ragaru, who studies in a very detailed fashion the attempts to ‘privatize’ the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. Either some take the credit for [being the saviors] themselves or the state becomes the savior. And the second thing is the externalization of guilt: everything is attributed to Nazi Germany alone—something that, in itself, is not true.”?

6 On Ratnik and radical nationalist formations in prewar and wartime Bulgaria, see Poppetrov, Socialno naljavo.

7 See the remarkable radio reportage by journalist Irina Nedeva, on the BNR program Horizont, March 9, 2023, https://bnr.bg/horizont/ post/101790785 /kavala; https: //bnr.bg/horizont/post/101790807 /anavi.

9 Aleksandar Oskar, “Pamet i moralnata otgovornost,” Kultura, March 13, 2023, 15.

PREFACE & xvii

On March 10, Professor Oskar and his organization also declined to attend the official commemorations of the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews” that were centered solely on celebrating the role of King Boris III in saving the Jews. The ceremony, whose program was made public at the last minute, started with the inauguration by President Radev of an exhibition on King Boris, a controversial figure, to say the least, at the Bulgarian National Library. Then a delegation led by the president, and comprising members of government, dignitaries of the Orthodox Church, and Simeon II, the son of the former king and himself a former prime minister, laid flowers before memorial plaques honoring King Boris and his wife, Queen Giovanna, as “saviors of the Bulgarian Jews.” These plaques had first been installed in Israel on the initiative of descendants of Bulgarian Jews based in the United States but were returned to Bulgaria in the wake of a July 2000 decision by a commission appointed by Yad Vashem and presided over by Polish-born Israeli Supreme Court justice (and president of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Commission) Moshe Bejski. The commission determined that the role King Boris played in deporting the Jews from the occupied territories meant that such a monument could not remain in the memorial “Bulgarian forest," not far from Jerusalem.!° The absence of the leadership of the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria Salom, was unprecedented. On that occasion, Professor Oskar publicly relayed the concerns of the Bulgarian Jewish community regarding commemorations that *present[ed] a distorted history of the Holocaust.”!!

Two days later, in his address at the memorial of the 7,144 Macedonian Jews in Skopje, the president of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, officially asked Bulgaria to publicly acknowledge the historical facts and to apologize for its role in the deportation of Macedonia's Jews during World War II: “The authentic meaning of the word ‘justice’ in both Hebrew and Macedonian points to what corresponds to the truth. Justice means to recognize and name the truth and for it to be respected by all. Reconciliation requires an apology about the role of the then-profascist government in Sofia in the deportation of the Macedonian Jews."!? This statement was broadly understood in Bulgaria as part and parcel of an anti-Bulgarian campaign, at

10 Ofer, “Tormented Memories,” 137-56.

ll David I. Nein, “Bulgarian Jews Skipped an Official Ceremony Marking 80 Years since Their Rescue from the Nazis: Why?,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 15, 2023, https://www.jta.org/2023/03/15/global/bulgarian-jewsskipped-an-official-ceremony-marking-80-years-since-their-rescue-from-thenazis-why.

12 “Pendarovski: Za da ima pomiruvanje, Bugarija treba da se izvini za deportacijata na makedonskite Evrei,” Republika.mk, December 3, 2023, https:// republika.mk/vesti/makedonija/pendarovski-za-da-ima-pomiruvane-bugarijatreba-da-se-izvini-za-deportatsijata-na-makedonskite-evrei/.

xviii §&® PREFACE a moment when the relationship between the two countries had reached a low point.

By June 12, the Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, and Serbian Jewish communities issued a statement recalling the historical coincidence, eighty years prior, “of unspeakable tragedy and of overwhelming humanity.” They emphasized the duty “to preserve the memory of the Shoah and acknowledge . . . the common threats and opportunities” to its preservation. “A number of public figures are attempting to change, distort, and rewrite the history of the Holocaust by shifting responsibility from pro-Nazi allies and collaborators to the Nazi regime,” they further asserted, insisting that “only united as Jewish communities, can our voice and the voices of our ancestors be heard and preserved.” 13

Meanwhile, Bulgarian intellectual milieus have become more divided than ever. While the head of the Institute of History of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Professor Vačkov, insisted in a television interview that “Bulgaria could not oppose sending people to work in the Reich,” 14 three other statements began to circulate in support of the new state policy. The first, released in November 2022, centered on the question of fascism. Denying the existence of such a regime in pre-1944 Bulgaria, the signatories claimed:

With regard to the implementation of anti-Semitic legislation and the restrictive actions against the Jewish population, the rulers in Sofia are under constant pressure from the German representatives in the country. . . . This universal attitude [the absence of hostile sentiments toward Jews] largely explains the failure of T. Danneker's mission in the spring of 1943 to deport Jews from the old borders of Bulgaria to the camps in Poland... . The behavior of Tsar Boris III shows that the anti-Jewish legislation in

13 The Memorandum of Understanding, released on June 12, 2023, was signed by Prof. Aleksandar Oskar, president of Salom; David Saltiel, president of the board of the Jewish communities of Greece; Pepo Levi, president of the Jewish community of the Republic of North Maedonia; Aleksandar Albahari, president of the Jewish community of Serbia; and WJC general counsel Menachem Rosensaft. The text was also read by Professor Oskar at the international conference “Survival of the Jews in Bulgaria and Deportation from Yugoslav and Greek Territories under Bulgarian Occupation: A Divided History,” convened by the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris on June 25, 2023 (with Prof. Nadége Ragaru as scientific organizer of the conference).

14 “Prof. Vackov: Bálgarija ne e mozela da se protivopostavja na izprastaneto na hora na rabota v Rajha,” Lice v Lice, on the private television channel BTV, March 13, 2023, https://www.btv.bg/shows /lice-v-lice /videos /profvachkov-balgarija-ne-e-mozhela-da-se-protivopostavja-na-izprashtaneto-nahora-za-rabota-v-rajha.html.

PREFACE &® xix

Bulgaria was completely imported from outside; it has a conjunctural character and does not reflect the understanding of the main political player in the country—the monarch.!?

The second initiative, which took the form of an open letter distributed at the end of February 2023 by "citizens and members of civil society organizations”—including several scholars—asked that any March 10 commemoration be held in front of the plaques dedicated to King Boris and Queen Giovanna. This, in turn, would take shape as an “act of recognition, and also an act in the defense of the historical truth and the value of Bulgaria."ló Finally, the third petition, promoted by eleven historians, mostly from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, claimed that the Bulgarian state had been in no position to oppose the deportation from territories under German control.!7

By contrast, other Bulgarian intellectuals (historians, sociologists, philosophers) penned a strongly worded statement calling on the Bulgarian state to recognize “the responsibility of the Bulgarian state in the persecution and deportation of the Jews during the Second World War from the occupied territories.” 18 The call—which before its official release on February 28 already bore the signatures of more than thirty academics, intellectuals, and public figures, including some from the arts—noted that Bulgaria’s historical policy could be construed as “negationism” as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an organization Bulgaria had joined in 2018. By March 27, this initiative had collected upwards of 264 additional signatures, mostly from Bulgarian intellectuals and artists.!? Finally, ahead of the commemorations, Bulgarian journalist Emmy Baruh

15 “Imalo li e fasitski režim v Balgarija? Stanovisteto na 22-ma istorici ot BAN: Fasismat nikoga ne idva na vlast v Balgarija, zajavjavat vodesti uceni i pripomnjat istoriceski fakti,” Offnews.by, November 23, 2022, https://m.offnews.bg/ news/TIstoriia 18809 /Imalo-li-e-fashistki-rezhim-v-Balgariia-Stanovishteto-na- 22-ma-istori_790134.html; “Stanoviste na bálgarski istorici po váprosa: Imalo li fashistki režim v Balgarija?,” https:;/ /www.bas.bg/?p-41867.

16 “Otkrito pismo ot iniciativna grupa za dostojno obeljazvane na 80-godisninata ot spasjavaneto na balgarskite evrei,” reprinted by Dnevnik, https://www. dnevnik.bg/analizi/2023/03/01/4455522_spasiavaneto_na_bulgarskite_ evrei_diskusiiata_za/.

17 By March 28, the petition has received twenty-seven signatures. https://www. peticiq.com/393491.

18 *Priziv za priznavane ot balgarskata darzava na otgovornostta i v presledvaneto i deportiraneto na evreite prez Vtorata svetovna vojna,” reprinted by Dnevnik, https:/ /www.dnevnik.bg/analizi/2023/03/01/4455522 spasiavaneto na . bulgarskite evrei diskusiiata za/.

19 https://www.peticiq.com/392570.

xx 6® PREFACE wrote an open letter to President Rumen Radev in which she stated that *what we choose to remember and what we choose to omit when telling our own story is a mark of wisdom, courage, and dignity.^20

Tracing how the history of the Holocaust in Bulgaria became caught up in such painfully divisive debates, exploring how narrating this past came to serve a diverse array of causes: these are the raisons d'étre of the book the reader now holds in her hands. More specifically, this volume aims to explain how, out of a complex past, one single facet—the nondeportation of the Bulgarian Jews, understood as a “rescue”—has become the primary way of narrating the history of World War II in Bulgaria and abroad. In other words, the Holocaust north of the River Danube became, to its south, a “rescue.” This book traces the legal, political, and cultural stakes, as well as the multiple local, regional, and international spaces where these understandings of the war were formulated, circulated, and appropriated beginning in 1944. And it shows how Jewish wartime destinies came to constellate around a broad range of (only weakly related) topics and cleavages. Ultimately, this research brings Jews themselves back into the lived experience, writing, and transmission of the historical events.

Against such a background, there is little wonder that this book became enmeshed in the debates that surrounded the eightieth anniversary, and, more broadly, the rewritings of the history of World War II. Initially published in French at the end of October 2020, the volume was released in Bulgarian in October 2022, at the moment when the preparations for the commemoration of the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews” were gaining momentum. A few days later, on November 2, 2022, Professor Oskar, the head of Salom, published a photo of himself on his Facebook page reading the book.?! The professor also spoke at the two book launches organized by the publishing house Kritika i Humanizám (KH—Critique & Humanism) and moderated by its director, Antoaneta Koleva—one at the Goethe Institute in Sofia on December 2, and the other at the Jewish Cultural House on December 15.2? Excerpts from the book were reprinted on the human rights website Librev.bg, in the cultural weekly Kultura, as well as in the daily newspaper Dnevnik.bg, the latter attracting around 9,300 readers over a couple of days. Bulgarian journalist Tatjana Vaksberg, who in 2015 had coordinated a new edition of the foundational archive collection originally assembled by Natan

20 https: //m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0fv NqcYMrkyCH Zylv19i1 NyQ6cW181FENh9XjyJdhRv84hnqVHSEUTQqpz5xsvT3Go5l &id-689476667.

22 ~~ https://www.facebook.com/CritiqueAndHumanism/ videos /613605353785600.

PREFACE & xxi

Grinberg in the winter of 1944-45,?° reviewed the book for the Bulgarian section of Free Europe (Svobodna evropa) website.2^ Interviews on national television,?? radio,?° and in the press followed.?7

The volume's publication provoked lively discussion and debate. News of its release circulated through social media and by word of mouth, and week after week, between emails to the author and comments posted online, it became clear that many had long awaited a scholarly analysis completed by an external observer—one who was not personally entangled in the controversies between supporters and critics of King Boris III, between former Communists and anti-communists, between and among Jews in Bulgaria, Israel, and other countries. In 2008, the historian Nadja Danova, research director at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had stumbled upon documents relating to the deportations from Northern Greece while conducting research on nineteenth-century Bulgarian history. From the moment she read those records, including the list of Jews by name, young and old, even infants, who were rounded up in March 1943, Danova began to pursue countless studies? as well as a thorough investigation into Bulgarian archives—a task in which she was soon joined by economic historian Roumen Avramov.?? In 2013, the pair published two volumes of Bulgarian archival records on the deportations from the occupied territories.??

However, whereas in the following years the number of documents accessible to the public continued to grow (including through the digitization of archives by the Bulgarian Central State Archives), no Bulgarian scholarly publication ever materialized about Jews’ wartime predicaments in territories under Bulgarian control. Of late, several inroads have been made by nonprofessional historians, including documentarist Jacky Comforty and writer and

23 Grinberg, Dokumenti (2015).

24 Tatjana Vaksberg, “‘Po-dobre de ne se govori’: Kak Holokosta stana razkaz za nešto drugo,” Svobodnaevropa.bg, December 16, 2022, https: //www.svobodnaevropa.bg/a/32178701.html.

25 On the television show Kultura.bg, on Channel 1 of Bulgarian National Television (BNT), and on the show Istorija.gg, on Channel 1 of BNT.

26 BNR programs Horizont and Hristo Botev; private radio channel Darik Radio.

27 *Nadez Ragaru: Balgarskite vlasti sa bili sáucastnici v deportaciite na evreite ot ‘novite zemi,” Capital.5g, March 24, 2023; “Nadez Ragaru: Sporat za ‘spasenieto' i ‘oceljavaneto,” Kultura, March 13, 2023, 4-8.

28 Nadia Danova, “La Bulgarie et ’Holocauste: État des recherches sur le probléme et perspectives,” Etudes balkaniques, no. 4 (2012): 18-44.

29 Roumen Avramov wrote on the Aryanization of Jewish properties: Avramov, “Spasenie” i padente.

30 Danova and Avramov, Deportiraneto.

xxi §&® PREFACE painter Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, both of Bulgarian Jewish descent.?! Bulgarian Jewish musicologist and writer Lea Koen has also written novels and historical essays on these events.?? Yet, as the scholar Raymond Detrez has noted, no study has addressed “the way both the salvation and the deportation have been presented in Communist and postcommunist Bulgarian narratives."?3

This book's invitation to readers—to accompany the author step by step in the investigation, to judge the material evidence for themselves, and to take the retelling of this history into their own hands—may have lent a renewed sense of hope to those intellectuals and human rights activists who, in Bulgaria and beyond, wish to foster a critical rereading of the national historical canon. At the time of writing this preface, it is impossible to know how Bulgaria's politics of history will evolve. But recent developments have without a doubt confirmed one observation made herein. Controversies do not simply register the state of affairs; they raise new questions, introduce new stakeholders, and require that key issues and tactics be redefined.

This discussion is now reaching an English-speaking audience that may not be familiar with the history of the Holocaust in Southeast Europe and the (mostly) Sephardic Jews. I would like to thank Series Editor Timothy Snyder for having accepted this piece as part of the Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe series that he coordinates, Editorial Director Sonia Kane for her sensitive and efficient guidance in seeing this project to completion, editor Robert Fullilove for his outstandingly precise and rigorous copyediting, as well as Assistant Editor Chris Adler-France, and Production Editor Tracey Engel for their great job on the book. Were it not for the remarkable translation work done by Holocaust historian David A. Rich and translator Dr. Victoria Baena, the complex narrative strategies of the book could never have journeyed from French into English. To both of them, my deepest gratitude is due. David provided continued support and encouragement for the project with a generosity seldom encountered today. I owe him more than I can say. All my thanks are also addressed to Anastasia Fairchild for her elegant assistance. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, as well as to Maria Todorova for her delicate and always stimulating remarks.

31 Comforty with Bloomfield, Stolen Narrative.

32 Koen, Spasenie, gonenija i holokost, and Rafael (Sofia: Enthusiast, 2017).

33 Raymond Detrez, “Book Review: Nadége Ragaru, ‘Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvés’: Une histoire des savoirs sur la Shoah en Bulgarie; Colloquia Humanistica 10 (2021), https:/ /ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/ article/view/ch.2608/7313.

PREFACE & xxiii

In France, Julie Gazier’s enthusiastic endorsement of the project at the Presses de Sciences Po gave me full freedom in choosing the kind of investigation and narrative form I wished to deploy. For this freedom, I am immensely grateful. In Bulgaria, publisher, translator, and philosopher Antoaneta Koleva, director of Kritika i Humanizăm, achieved wonders: she cotranslated and meticulously edited the Bulgarian version of the text. All my thanks also go to Roumen Avramov, who cotranslated that volume and wrote one of its two forewords; to Liliana Deyanova, who authored the second foreword and gave graciously of her time in checking sundry sources, dates, and quotations. Were it not for the acumen, rigor, and generosity of archivist and historian Marijana Piskova, the book would not have seen the light of day. All my thanks are also due to Asja Enčeva for her subtle and diligent assistance. The friendship of the “Blagoevgrad group” (Milena Angelova, Anastasija Kirilova, Nurie Muratova, Anastasija Pašova, Kristina Popova, Petăr Vodeničarov, and Sergej Vučlov) and of Vanessa Voisin, Valérie Pozner, and Clara Royer was a tremendous source of hope. I also thank Professor Eyal Ginio, Ilya Grinberg, David Ieroham, Emil Rahamimov, Professor Iris Rahamimov, and Andrea Simon for sharing private archives with me. A note of gratitude, finally, to Maël Le Noc, whose geographic insights allowed me to further explore the visual archive of March 1943 discussed in chapter 3.

For their permission to publish materials from their collections, I wish to express my gratitude and to thank the archivists, librarians, and directors at museums: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia, Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, and Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris; archives: Bulgarian Central State Archives, Archives of the Committee for Disclosing the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to the State Security and Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian National Army, State Military Historical Archives of Bulgaria, Archives of the Bulgarian National Film Library, Archives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, USHMM, State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia (today North Macedonia), Federal Archives of Germany, Hessian Central State Archives, Yad Vashem Archives, Archives of the Ghetto Fighters? House in Israel, Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, Archives of Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris; and libraries—New York Public Library, Regional Library of Munich, Library of the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Bulgarian National Library, and National and University Library at Sv. Kliment Ohridski. I reserve a special thanks for Kalina Ancova, Bruno Boyer, UIf Brunnbauer, Judith Cohen, Angel Corapciev, Gudrun Franke, Galina Genceva, Vanja Gezenko, Frosina Gjuréevska, Mihail Gruev, Radu Ioanid, Borijana Mateeva, Rumijana Nedjalkova, Professor Aleksánder Oskar, Livia Parnes, Marijana Piskova, xxiv é PREFACE